Technologies associated with mobile terminals are being rapidly developed and standardized, and such technologies offer better and more sophisticated services and products to end users. In this regard, a variety of different external devices are available to connect to and interact with the mobile terminal in order to provide such services to the users.
Generally, if the mobile terminal is in the power-on state (i.e., the terminal is turned on), then an external device communicates with applicable components of the mobile terminal to implement the desired operations. Before the external device initiates a specific operation or service for the mobile terminal, the external device checks terminal profile information stored in the mobile terminal to determine if the mobile terminal has the necessary capabilities to accommodate the specific operation. In the power-on state of the mobile terminal, there is no problem for the external device to access the terminal profile information stored in the memory of the terminal since the memory is powered on. Although the terminal profile information is stored among many other information and data in the memory, the external device can access the terminal profile information in the power-on state without limitations.
For example, in order for the external device to implement a GPS application or banking operation with or through the mobile terminal, the external device first accesses terminal profile information from a memory of the mobile terminal and checks the capability of the mobile terminal to determine if the mobile terminal is capable of handling such operation. If the terminal is not capable of handling the operation, then the external device does not initiate a further action.
In many cases, the external device may desire to check the terminal profile information even when the mobile terminal is in the power-off state. That is, it would be desirable to have the terminal profile information accessible to external devices at any time. For example, before the mobile terminal is powered on, it may be desirable for an applicable external device to check the terminal profile information in advance, so that when the mobile terminal is turned on, the external device can immediately initiate or implement only the applicable operations with the mobile terminal without wasting time and other resources.
However, when the mobile terminal is in the power-off state, limited power from a battery may be supplied only to a keypad and clock management unit of the terminal for a key detection. Then since the memory of the terminal is not powered on, the external device cannot access the terminal profile information from the terminal in the power-off state. This limits the related art mobile terminal from providing an optimized quality of services to the user. This also does not help the external device in the process of initiating and implementing various services and operations for or with the mobile terminal.